


If the Silence Takes You

by ZeelosRN



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:13:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22876108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZeelosRN/pseuds/ZeelosRN
Summary: Schitt's Creek is an effective if miserable place for a slightly-too-famous cat burglar to hide, until his detective nemesis catches up to him.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 22
Kudos: 59





	1. There Are Roads Left in Both of Our Shoes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [olive2read](https://archiveofourown.org/users/olive2read/gifts).



> This work contains errors that will not be fixed. See end notes for why.

No one would expect a famed cat burglar in Schitt's Creek. There was nothing worth burgling in Schitt's Creek and if he tried to sell something barely worth it, someone would say, "Oh, hey, that's Ronnie's mitre saw, why do you have it?"

No one would ever expect a famed cat burglar in Schitt's Creek, which seemed like a genius plan until he got there. 

* Problem one: he stuck out like a sore thumb. No one in this town even moisturized properly, let alone respected the power of a good sweater.

* Problem two: there wasn't so much as a nail salon any closer than Elm Valley, the nearest travesty calling itself a spa was even further, and, thanks to circumstances he had no wish to dwell on, he didn't have a car he would trust for more than two blocks.

* Problem three: he had no income. See "no one would ever expect a famed cat burglar in Schitt's Creek." He'd stolen jewelry that could buy all of downtown; at the moment, he was holed up in a terrible motel because the manager owed him a favor and, for some reason, tolerated his presence.

"Look. David. Cut it the fuck out," Stevie said. (Tolerating his presence may have _slightly_ overstated the matter.) "I get that you need something to do, but planning my wardrobe is not doing either of us any favors."

He eyed her clothes in speculation. "If you'd just try-"

"Why don't you go into business as a locksmith?"

He glared. "Low profile. Also I can't fix a lock."

"Fashion consultant to someone who isn't me?"

"Here? My blood pressure couldn't handle it. I thought the Canadian tuxedo was a joke no one would ever wear."

"And your first client would murder you."

"I'm only here until I figure out what happened. I have next steps. I just don't know what they are yet."

"If you want to figure out what happened-"

"I don't need your help."

"Don't you need to actually, like, talk about what happened? Or at least think about it?"

"I'm sure there's another way."

"Right, that's it." Stevie stuck a hand into the side of the sofa, between the arm and the cushion. Her arm went in up to the bicep, David honestly couldn't figure out where. She extracted a bottle. David gasped.

"You've been holding out on me!"

"Of course I've been holding out on you! If I hadn't, you'd be dead _and_ I wouldn't have any goldschlager."

David humphed and made a huffy gimme-hand for the bottle.

"Don't spill," she said, as his long reach wobbled a bit. He took a deep swallow and was pretty sure his face actually rotated a few degrees on his skull with the force of his grimace. Goldschlager was not his poison of choice, to say the least. Stevie took the bottle back and drank without looking away from him. He felt the heat of alcohol rise from his belly up to his scalp. When he felt like his ears were a bit tipsy, she nodded to herself. "Alright, now _spill_."

It had to be Agent Brewer, but at the same time, he couldn't picture Brewer—his Patrick, his short, straight, straight-arrow nemesis—having the resources or the cold-blooded insight to hit him as he had. He and Brewer were dance partners, circling around the places where they touched, always in tension and never getting too close. There was the time Brewer orchestrated the trap at the Met Gala and David barely walked out a free man (on the arm of a director whose attire outshone his). But Brewer--

"It all changed when I visited Brewer's apartment," he said.

"When you what? Why? Isn't he, like, RCMP?"

David shrugged. "I did my homework. I got in and out clean. But I-"

He could still smell that room, although he didn't have good words for the smells. Pine needles without Christmas trees, but secular pine needles that demanded no ornament, that made his secular Jewish self feel somehow welcome in a place he was not welcome at all.

He had seen, to some extent, what he expected. The apartment of a hard-working, serious man. The shelves upon shelves of books and the e-reader left on the breakfast table, evidence of the intelligence he'd come to know. The photo beside the laptop of a beautiful woman, smiling in flannel. The hiking boots by the front door, mud still caked on the soles. The staid blues and grays of the Target brand decor. The bed, with the covers pulled up but not properly made. Nothing tidy, nothing messy. Just a resting place. And yet, in extracting the files he came for, he had accidentally applied the part of himself that focused on his targets to someone he cared far more about than any target, and found himself more closely acquainted with Agent Brewer than he had ever wished to be.

"I left him a drawing." It was probably the stupidest thing he had ever done. He'd tucked it into the manila envelope from which he'd removed several other sheets. He dearly wished it could have been safe to leave a camera in one of those corners, to see Brewer's face when he discovered the change.

Stevie had started out with her chin leaning on the heel of her hand, but her hand had slid up at some point and was now braced under her cheekbone, while her fingers covered the one eye. She didn't have to say a word.

"After that-" It was as if he'd leaned in for a kiss in the middle of a dance lesson. Brewer no longer appeared in person at sites David was casing. No more snide comments sneaked into press statements. David maintained that he didn't care, but it had been unsettling all the same. He didn't have anyone else telling him jokes, then. "After that, Sebastien got audited. Well, two years later. But it felt connected."

Stevie's face was still tilted down, so when she looked up at him, her eyes were sarcastically wide.

"So after a thousand near-misses lying flat in attics and squirming out windows, they took me down with a very polite woman in a suit who only ever talked face-to-face with my bank." He took another swig of goldschlager. "I hope it was just a coincidence."

"Seriously?"

"I always assumed if anyone caught me, it would be Brewer. It's just wrong for it to be some accountant."

A week later, Stevie kicked him out of the motel. Not permanently, but she declared she needed space to be loud and have sex, and he could either have loud sex or leave for eight hours while she found other company for the day. This was effective only because they were living together. Under _any_ other circumstances he would have stayed in, but living with a sex partner was too close to having a relationship. As much as he wanted that, David also panicked, and here he was, letting himself casually into a closed-up general store with a paperclip and a pocketknife.

Not to steal anything. There was nothing worth taking, here. Just old empty fixtures and cobwebs. He just needed a place that was his and his earliest memories of safety were of breaking into places no one else went. He felt better as soon as the door swung closed behind him. The windows weren't boarded, and there was a bit of foot traffic, but it was a sunny day and the interior was dark enough he wasn't over-worried about being seen, as long as he didn't move around too much. He sat on an empty shipping crate in the back room and tried to come up with a plan to get out of Schitt's Creek.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when a key turned in the lock. He froze in place, because running out the back door would confirm that someone was in here to start with, and he couldn't guarantee he wouldn't be seen leaving. Easier to tell most of the truth and say the door was unlocked, and he wanted a place to think, if whoever it was even came back here and found him.

The door opened, the door closed, and he heard the snkt! of the deadbolt sliding back into place. He breathed softly, ready to pretend to wake up from a nap. Three steps on the floor in the front room. And then an impossible voice.

"Sebastien?"

He took a deep breath rather than act on reflex. If he panicked, with Agent Brewer in town, he was going to end up somewhere even less comfortable than Stevie's spare room. 

"No, sorry," he said. He stood up, stepped to the doorway, dusted his slacks with his hands to show just how unconcerned he was.

Agent Patrick Brewer, here. They'd never met in the flesh but David had memorized his face from stolen security footage and photographs. Cropped red hair. Boy-next-door charm. Jeans and a blue button-up rather than a suit, interesting choice, but then he was probably undercover. Or on vacation. Why was he here, asking for Sebastien? David had never had his own image captured, at least up to when he'd stolen his file. There had been several memos requesting progress on getting his picture. His heart was racing and not in the good way it sped up to help him get out of trouble. He took another deep breath.

And noticed Brewer hadn't said anything either. The agent was just standing there, looking at him, eyes a bit wide. "Sebastien?" he said again. Something in the tone of voice, something about this screamed at David's instincts, but he didn't dare try to track down what it was while he had to banter for his life.

"I'm sorry, I don't know who that is," David lied. "I'm David Rose." He held out his hand as if this was a business meeting, then realized how strange that was as Brewer's breathing sped up. But the other man stepped forward.

"Brewer," he said, as their hands touched. "Patrick Brewer." A firm squeeze, no hint of macho posturing there, a sudden release. Disgusted? Awkward?

David was beginning to feel sick to his stomach as the implications stacked up. He was not free. There was no next step. "What brings you to Schitt's Creek, Mr. Brewer? Who's Sebastien?"

"The famed cat burglar, Sebastien Raine. I tracked him here, and here you are." Brewer's eyes flicked down David's body—taking in his sweater, his slacks, his shoes—and back up. "What are you doing alone in a locked empty store, Mr.- Mr. Rose?"

That's what his instincts had been trying to tell him. _Sebastien_ , Brewer had called him, not _Raine_. He was apparently on first-name terms with a cover identity, in his own head at least.

"I'm thinking about buying it," David said, because the truth was intolerable now.

Brewer blinked at him. "You're thinking about buying it."

"Can't you see the potential in the space?" He looked around, because if he was going to have any chance of selling this bullshit with his brains as scrambled as Brewer had them, he was going to have to sell himself on the idea, too.

"I can't see you running a general store."

"Oh, not a general store," David said, scrambling for what the fuck kind of business he could possibly be qualified to operate. "A very specific store. Offering only the finest merchandise."

"Right. Only the finest. What kind of merchandise did you say?"

"How long have you spent in Schitt's Creek?"

"You're avoiding the question."

"No, I'm asking if you've noticed the, well, the absence of certain luxury goods here. Like, any luxury goods at all. Or anything a self-respecting person would consider using for skin care." He slipped, finally, _finally_ , into the zone. He could feel the bits of the plan sliding into place.

"Interesting. I'd be curious to see your business plan."

"My what?"

"Business plan? The basic document an entrepreneur writes up to show to potential investors?"

It was David's turn to blink. "I haven't written one. But thank you, I'll Google how to."

Brewer tipped his head to the side. "What did you say your name was, again?"

"David. David Rose." So profound a truth shouldn't feel like a lie, surely.

"Do you want to go out to lunch? I'll help you draft your business plan."

"I appreciate the offer, but-"

"It'll be good practice for me. I went back to school for accounting a couple years ago, and I haven't had much experience. If your business takes off, I’ll get to use you as a reference."

David had a moment of vertigo, looking into that guileless face. He'd never understood that pebble-dropping metaphor, but he had the simultaneous sensation of being in free fall and being completely stable. "You're an accountant."

Brewer shrugged. "I needed a career change."

David's mouth went dry. "What did you do before?"

Brewer stepped forward, and David couldn't step back. "Did you ever have that feeling that your life was humming along like a top and then it hit a bit of lint or something and wobbled all over the table in crazy zigzags? And then suddenly it just--stopped, like a puzzle piece falling into place?"

"I'm having a very hard time picturing this top."

"I didn't know what you looked like. I heard your voice once, you know."

"You did? We've never met-"

"Through a wire. You found it five minutes too late."

"I don't-"

Brewer put a hand on David's wrist, not a grasp like a cuff, just the calluses of his fingers against the knob of bone. "You destroyed the life I had," he said, quietly. "I had to destroy yours to feel- to feel-"

"Even?"

"Absolved? I couldn't let you walk away with your ill-gotten gains-"

"Did you just use the words 'ill-gotten gains' in a serious sentence?"

"But I thought- maybe if you didn't keep the money-"

David kissed him before he thought through what he was doing. He'd kissed so many people, it was an easy pattern to fall into when the conversation became intolerable. Brewer froze on a tiny gasp that might as well have been a fist closing around David's guts, but when David backed off, Brewer grabbed him and shoved him up against the nearest display case. The metal edge on the glass was sharp against David's thighs, Brewer's hands were ruining his hair and he didn't have the breath to protest because they were kissing savagely.

If they were doing this, and apparently they were, then David wanted control. He tried to shove a knee between Brewer's but, apparently, federal agents got some kind of hand-to-hand combat training, because what actually happened was that he ended up flipped over with his cheek to the glass and Brewer's teeth in the muscle between his shoulder and his neck. He cursed a blue streak but didn't want to risk breaking the glass by putting up a real fight and the pressure of Brewer's erection against his ass promised good things. He squirmed and Brewer made a noise that was probably "fuck" but with his mouth full, and just as he was discovering that the metal edge meant he had fuck all to grind against, it all stopped. Brewer straightened up and took a couple steps back.

David reluctantly pushed himself upright too, checking his hair and cringing at what he felt. When he could stand to look, he saw that Brewer was blushing red, still staring at him, and still hard, but not moving to continue. David swallowed. "Right, then. This is where you say you don't know what came over you and duck out, right?"

"I don't know what I'm doing," Brewer said.

"Well, we were ramping up to a pretty satisfying hatefuck, but if you had other plans-"

"No!" Brewer looked like he was trying to shrink himself, shoulders pulled down in a position David's mother would never have approved, even his lips (red, wet) compressed. "No, I mean, I haven't- I don't- You probably know-"

David could actually feel his heart crack. That, or it was a coronary from all the stress and emotional flip-flopping. "Agent Brewer," he said.

"Patrick. I quit that job."

"Patrick, I would _greatly_ enjoy teaching you."


	2. The Only Song I Want to Hear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And now from Patrick's perspective.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Moral injury/burnout. Incidental mention of near-drowning in the past.

He couldn't say precisely when the cracks began to appear. Perhaps there always had been a few. He didn't _feel_ flawed, in the beginning.

He could remember his first day on the job. He’d been so eager, ready to bust international drug cartels and rescue the victims of human trafficking. He could remember the first preceptor who’d shrugged and said, "We don't have time to look for her." Henry Archambeau, that had been, himself an eighth Ojibwa and thereby uncorrectable on any matters of race. Certainly no good could come from one white, wet-behind-the-ears recruit questioning why First Nations women weren't a priority. Patrick told himself that day that there might be flaws in the system, and he might not be able to fix all of them, but he could still do his part to make things better. He believed he could guard the core of himself.

He remembered Mrs. Barlow-Trincey, who literally had not noticed the theft of her "beloved" Faberge egg until it turned up in a photo essay on the excesses of a Mexican kingpin and a friend pointed it out to her. He remembered her tears, bafflingly genuine, and he remembered wondering how someone whose life was affected so little could have so little resilience in the face of inconvenience. He remembered standing silently, with his best "understanding and compassionate" look lacquered on his face, while she berated him for the unconscionable amount of crime in Canada these days, no doubt due to what she told him at length were the unconscionable numbers of immigrants and Indians. He did not bother to ask who, exactly, she thought ought to be considered Canadian. When she got around to berating him, personally, by name (she pronounced "Brewer" as if it offended her), for not having arrested the thief, he allowed himself a brief fantasy of retorting, "I don't have time to look for him," and leaving her to it. Because of where it turned up, locating the egg's thief _was_ legitimately serious work (and, anyhow, he’d never really be able to walk away from a case assignment).

Rachel, who had been assigned the very human trafficking cases he’d hoped to crack, was crying herself to sleep in his arms every night. Patrick stroked her back and let her pound her fists against his chest and told himself he was glad that, even if his own work was disappointing, at least he was supporting hers. When, in the morning, red-eyed over coffee, she asked how his day had been, he shrugged and mumbled something about working a property theft case. He never looked in a mirror except to shave. He couldn’t bear to face his "understanding and compassionate" lacquer, which by now was stained deep into the grain of his skin.

Fatigue grayed out his life. He spent his days at work either in the field, losing himself in taking witness statements, or in the office, trying to concentrate on adequately documenting his cases. He wondered why he was always so damn horny under the fluorescent lights in his office, alone in the least sexy place he could imagine, and yet had to psych himself up to proposition Rachel. She was beautiful in the intensity she brought to her investigations, she both needed and loved him, and in her company he felt about as amorous as a folding chair.

By the time he heard the name Sebastien Raine, there were definitely cracks, even if he refused to acknowledge them. They'd put the screws (not literal screws; Patrick wasn’t in quite that dark a place, at least not yet) on a mostly-legitimate jewelry dealer with a knack for ‘acquiring’ pieces her customers wanted. She had never seen Raine's face because he insisted on a blind-drop system. His initial contact with her had been by typewritten letter left in her (locked, alarmed) store, every display case unlocked but untouched.

Patrick sat stakeout at the drop for three days in the bitter Toronto cold, scrutinizing everyone who came and went, even the man who showed up for a few hours on Saturday to sell flowers to the passers-by, and then, when he went to retrieve the bait, found a wilted rose tucked under the envelope flap. Raine had been and gone. They posted a guard at the jeweler's but she was cleared out within a week. Somehow.

The burglaries weren't his only cases, but they drew him more and more. They were bright spots, and not just because, generally, there was no racism involved, but because of Raine's sense of panache. He once robbed a mansion during a child's birthday party, dressed in full-on Batman gear, and ignored the spoiled birthday girl to give $100, a batarang, and a scathing critique of the birthday girl's dress to a guest crying quietly in a corner. Patrick didn't believe in Robin Hood, he knew Sebastien Raine was getting filthy rich off his thefts—the man was no martyr to a cause—but those little whimsical touches got him through day after gray day.

Rachel inevitably noticed when his fascination began to leak through in his comments to the press. Less predictably, she was pleased. "I was worried you were burning out," she said, as they reviewed their respective case files over takeout. "It's nice to see you enjoying work again." With her blessing, he stopped feeling guilty about his newfound addiction to the study of Sebastien Raine. He worked the profiling angle hard, doing his best to get inside his adversary's mind. He started visiting potential targets ahead of time, the fabulously wealthy and the stores that catered to them.

The second-guessing and mind games that ensued absolutely enthralled him. Many places he visited _were_ ultimately robbed. At first he thought he was getting the hang of predicting Sebastien's actions, but it didn’t take long before he started to wonder whether Sebastien was following _him_ and deliberately robbing the places he visited. After the first year, the thief started to leave little cartoons: stick-figure sketches of someone in the Mountie hat with little question marks over his head while someone in a mask ran away, carrying a bag with dollar signs on it.

It was enraging, or so he told himself, to know the fascination was mutual. He tried to focus on the potential advantages. He poured himself into the case. Things with Rachel had cooled off a bit. They were still together, but he slept at his own place most nights now, rather than come in at odd hours and wake her.

He was actively pretending there were no cracks, that he was understanding and compassionate straight through, when three sentences of Sebastien's voice came through the wire, mixed with a bunch of nervous babble Patrick ignored:

"How _lovely_ to see you again."

"No, thank you."

"This blazer is _at war_ with your socks."

He switched to shaving in the shower, by feel. On bad days he turned the lights off. If sometimes he set the razor down and his hands went elsewhere, surely it was just the stress of the job, the kind of thing anyone would do.

Patrick had lied to himself for so long, and so convincingly, that when he stood in his living room and smelled another man, someone whose soap cost a lot more than his and probably slid over smoother skin, it felt like his shattering came from nowhere. He threw open the door to his bedroom, his bathroom—hoping—but nothing was displaced. Everything was exactly as he left it, except the air that had changed in a way even a cat burglar couldn't put back to how it had been.

He was in his office the next day when he found the drawing. He proposed to Rachel that night. They agreed that he would give notice immediately. He decided to go back to school, so that he could have a low-stress schedule to support her. She didn't ask about the burglaries case. He never told her.

He honestly didn't realize what he was doing until _after_ he'd tracked the winding streams of cash and credit to a particular bank account. Rachel was the one to coordinate with the tax people; Patrick was on the books as an expert civilian consultant only. He went to a tuxedo fitting with Rachel, and, when the tailor turned him to face the mirror, he was shocked to see how bland he looked. He looked just like a harmless accountant, understanding and compassionate, no hard edges to his face or manners, and inside the shell there was no substance, only dust. 

He didn't know what needed to change, but _something_ absolutely had to, or he would die. He didn't know why his conviction was so absolute, but there was an image in his head of the first time he confronted death, as a child caught for a moment under his friends' feet as they sat on an inner tube at the lake. He remembered trying frantically to push up into the open space at the center of the tube and being kicked back down, and he remembered how the blur of light and shadow made children's feet monstrous. He needed out of his life now as urgently as he'd needed out of the water then. 

That evening, as he was closing out his files on Sebastien's case preparatory to some drastic break with his reality, he happened across a property transfer from 2012 that he'd initially assumed was laundering. On the other side of several weeks' worth of untangling Sebastien's actual money laundering process, he could tell this was something else. A gift? A sale in good faith?

Maybe a backup plan?

And that was how his drastic break with reality turned into buying a trailer, packing up the few worldly goods he cared about, giving notice on his lease, and hitting the road. He was aware that he should probably say something to Rachel, but none of the words he had made any sense.

Instead, as the miles towards the town with the terrible name ticked away on his odometer, he tried to understand what he wanted to find when he got there.

He was not prepared for the eyebrows. He didn't think there was any way _to_ prepare for them. The ridiculous hair didn't scream "criminal," either. Wouldn't it snag on windowsills? How had they never found hair product residue at a scene? But he would never fail to recognize that voice. He had never imagined a face for his Sebastien, torn between guilt and simply not knowing where to start, and so now the somewhat ridiculous, highly mobile face of this aspiring entrepreneur named David Rose was seeping backwards into his memories, into all the half-formed dreams about what was between them. They sat across the table from each other, eating what was objectively terrible food, but Patrick didn't care, because all his attention was on the man across from him. Whom he'd kissed. Whom he was now starting to acknowledge he'd been in love with ever since he’d found a work of subtle art in a case file. They were in public and couldn't just talk, so they were trying to hash out a business plan on an old Steno pad, with a pen borrowed from the waitress.

"I do know what income and expenditures are," David said. His voice was snippy, but his eyes, so sarcastic looking at the paper, went soft just for a moment when they met Patrick's, like the butt of a cat's head against his face. Patrick squirmed in his seat. He was miserably aware that this criminal could ask him for anything and receive it, and also that he felt neither hollow nor dust-like at the moment.

"Yes, right, but you're talking about a retail business, not whatever kind of unholy cash flow arrangement you had before. You need to think about stock, capital, and depreciation. Loss prevention," he said, quirking an eyebrow. "Insurance."

David waved a hand, rolling his whole head with his eyes. "I can just take it back."

What got him were the moments when he was almost certain he wasn't being played. Of course, he wasn't a Mountie anymore, so there wasn't much in him worth playing. But David had called what they were considering a "hatefuck," and Patrick was relatively certain that wasn't what he wanted from this encounter. At all. Well, maybe the fuck part.

"You can't solve expiration of time-sensitive goods with burglary," he said. "You're talking about selling clothing. Isn't 'that's so last year' an expression for a reason?"

David's eyes narrowed. When he laughed, Patrick's heart jumped. _I did that,_ he thought. Making David Rose happy might have been the best he'd felt about himself in years.

"You make me think I can actually do this," David said.

It was a joke, but Patrick answered the vulnerability under it. "I don't see why not. You're clearly intelligent. You have- you have an eye for detail, of course, but you also have the ability to look at something and see how other people see it."

"I don't think I'm going to learn accounting."

"Do you want an accountant?"

Their eyes met and held across the table.

"Yes."

And that was how Patrick Brewer ended up sinking his life's savings into a store selling only the finest quality merchandise.

In the back room, as they argued about fixtures and opening dates, he put up the one bit of art he'd brought from Ottawa. Not a cartoon (those were all in evidence storage), not the picture of Rachel. It was in black ballpoint pen with touches of red and blue. A rose garden, with one blossom in the foreground, tossed in a thunderstorm. When David stopped ranting for a moment about proper ventilation for fabrics, he turned to see what the hammering had been, and paused blinking like he was trying to see into a strong wind.

The first time Patrick tried giving a blow job was ten minutes later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm pretending I'm a neural net. "We fed an AI five hundred thousand words of SC fic, then gave it a prompt!"
> 
> Thanks to @olive2read for the copyedit. No dev edits were allowed; all errors are mine.

**Author's Note:**

> I have never seen even one episode of Schitt's Creek, but hang out and trade betas with some fantastic writers from that fandom, and, well, here we are. Someone suggested the cat burglar/detective AU and I thought "I could write that!" but absolutely EVERYTHING I know about canon is interpolation from fic. So this is what happens when you write fic-fic. You get weird errors on, like, hair color. And which characters are actual people.


End file.
